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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26053147">Where You Rest Your Head</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovetincture/pseuds/lovetincture'>lovetincture</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Supernatural</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Missing Scene, Pre-Series, Season/Series 01, Slice of Life</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 10:21:06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,611</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26053147</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovetincture/pseuds/lovetincture</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean and Sam share a bed. It’s just what they do.</p><p>Snapshots in a life of bedsharing.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dean Winchester &amp; Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>128</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Little Lamb, Little Lamb</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>A childhood in bedsharing.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sam slept in Dean’s bed until he was—well, until he was way too old. Dean could never tell if it was nurture or nature or something else entirely. It’s not like they ever knew anything but each other, not like they grew up with a glut of space to call their own. Like as not, they were catching their Z’s in the back of the car, folded up into each other with a wadded-up t-shirt for a pillow, their father’s jacket spread over them like a blanket, scent of wood smoke and whiskey keeping the warmth in and everything else out.</p><p>If on one of those nights their car chugged into a motel parking lot, if their dad loaded them out of the car, Sammy bundled up in his arms and Dean toddling blearily behind, still knuckling at his eyes—it was never a very far trip, was it, to spill into a clean full-sized bed whose comforter smelled invariably like cigarette smoke.</p><p>Sam was small and warm, his nose and cheeks pinked by the night air, cold when they pressed into the skin of Dean’s neck. He smelled like milk, like the back of the car and somehow, always, like Dad. It was easy as anything for Dean to wrap young arms around him and hug him close, the lamp from the far side of the room faint distant in his awareness, the crack on the seal of another bottle of whiskey and the shuffle of paper almost a lullaby as sleep dragged him under.</p><p>Anyone who’d ever met their father would rightly assume he had some kind of problem with his youngest sleeping in his brother’s bed well past his thirteenth birthday. They’d be right, and they’d be wrong.</p><p>John didn’t, strictly speaking, <em>like</em> it, but he was nothing if not a tactician. He’d learned to pick his battles—the first rule of war—and this, as far as he was concerned, was not a battle worth fighting. Not while there were monsters to be put down, not while Yellow Eyes roamed free.</p><p>So this is how it went—Sam got his sleep, and Dean didn’t seem to mind it, so fine. It wasn’t a problem. John wasn’t looking to borrow trouble in the form of theatrics about bedtime anyhow.</p><p>He did wonder about it from time to time—how could he not? He was only human, after all, and he’d never seen anything like it. Never seen anything like the way Sam leaned into Dean, sweetly seeking comfort. Never seen anything like the way Dean responded, even in sleep, snuffling and kicking at the covers and hauling Sam closer with a sure hand threaded through the back of his hair.</p><p>John had brothers of his own, and they had never been that close, even before the war. He’d never even heard of brothers that close.</p><p>But well, John was raising something new, wasn’t he? He was raising soldiers, fighters. Everything else about them was different, so why not this too?</p><p>* * *</p><p>“Don’t you want to sleep in your own bed?” Dean asks one night. It’s late—the kind of late that goes so far it swings back around to early. They’d spent the night tracking a werewolf that turned out to be nothing more than a particularly destructive grey wolf terrorizing chickens in the area.</p><p>No matter, a kill’s a kill.</p><p>Dad had got it in his sights, breath slow and deep and finger squeezing on the trigger. Dean waited for the loud crack of a gunshot that never came. John swung the muzzle down, lowering it to point at the whispering forest floor.</p><p>“No use wasting good silver,” he’d said.</p><p>As if on cue, the wolf’s head raised like it could hear them, muzzle long and lupine in the night. It ran off through the underbrush, leaving nothing behind but a flick of tail and a vague impression of movement and shadow.</p><p>That was the most exciting part of the night. The rest was all trudging it back to the car the way they came, feeling every scrape and scratch of low branches against their skin now that there wasn’t any adrenaline to ease the way. Every cut itched, and Dean was dreaming about pizza, about extra-extra-large supreme, molten cheese and salty sausage bursting greasy on his tongue. It was almost enough to keep him warm in the dark.</p><p>Sam grumbled about being out so late, about midterms in the morning, about every woe of the world until John grabbed him with a firm grasp around one skinny little arm. “There may not be werewolves in these woods, but there’s always something meaner and hungrier than you. Quiet down.”</p><p>Sam jerked his arm away, a now-characteristic display of teenage rebellion, glaring mulishly at John from beneath overlong bangs, but he didn’t make another peep until they were back in the car. Even then, he kept to himself, curling in on himself, tucked as close to the door as he could get, watching the pitch pines and mile markers whiz by.</p><p>“I want you boys cleaned up and in bed in ten,” Dad says as soon as they get home.</p><p>It’s a relic of a bygone time. He and Sam are at that age where they barely need telling. They’ve been on dozens of hunts between them. They’ve loaded in and loaded out of the car more times than Dean can count. They’re already down the hallway, piling in the bathroom and stripping off sweat-sticky clothes side by side in the dark wood hell of ‘60s decor.</p><p>Dean hops in the shower first because Sam’s got one big paw wrapped around his toothbrush, blearily squeezing Winterfresh on it and jamming it in his mouth. They’ve done this dance hundreds of times before, if not thousands. They can share a bathroom without ever once colliding, without needing to talk or negotiate. They work on this level, just like all the others.</p><p>Dean leans back in the tiny shower cubicle, tiled in shades of beige and dubious mildew. It’s barely big enough to turn around, but the hot water striking sore muscles feels like heaven all the same. He takes it as his due, those few, uninterrupted minutes under the shoddy water pressure. He takes his pleasures where he can, grabbing them tight and sucking them down to the marrow, every small joy he’s allowed.</p><p>Sam putters outside, faint rattles as he puts his toothbrush away and does whatever else it is boys his age do when they’re in the bathroom. The sounds might bother anyone else, a deviation from the illusion of true solitude, but it has the opposite effect on Dean. He’s comforted by the sounds of Sam, his breathing neither quiet or loud, the simple life of him within striking distance.</p><p>Dean shuts off the water with a sigh. He steps out of the shower and into the humid air, grabbing a towel and drying off while Sam takes his turn. He slings the towel (damp, dingy-white, smells like mildew) around his waist and pads to the bedroom, suddenly bone-weary. It’s an effort to drag on a pair of boxers and a t-shirt before collapsing onto the bed.</p><p>He leaves the light on—let Sam deal with it, but he drowses all the same.</p><p>Sam still isn’t talking by the time he tramps back to their shared room, hair wet and shirt sticking damply to his skin from the swampy bathroom humidity. There’s no tension in the air—it’s less that Sam isn’t talking to him specifically than that Sam isn’t in a talking mood tonight. </p><p>“Feel like I could sleep for a million years,” Dean says anyway. To nobody. To Sam, to the empty room.</p><p>Sam snorts a little, tiny huff of breath that’s nowhere near a laugh but nevertheless tells Dean all he needs to hear—Sammy’s here. Sammy’s with him.</p><p>He buries his face in the pillow to block out the light, so he hears rather than sees the sounds of Sam getting ready for bed, the dresser drawer opening, the wet thump of a towel hitting the ground.</p><p>“Pick that up or Dad’ll be on your ass tomorrow,” Dean says without looking.</p><p>“You did it first,” Sam retorts, but Dean hears the sound of Sam walking down the hallway all the same. When he looks up, both their towels are gone.</p><p>Sam comes back, legs skinny and pale beneath his shorts, one of Dad’s old t-shirts swimming on him. He’s highlighted in the doorway for the briefest of moments, hair already starting to spring up wildly around his head. His face is sleepy and annoyed, and Dean feels an unaccountable surge of fondness. The room is plunged into darkness in another second as Sam swings the door shut and flicks off the lights.</p><p>He pads his way over to the bed by memory. They haven’t lived here long, but long enough to get the lay of the land.</p><p>Sam huffs gratefully into bed, tossing himself down on the hard little mattress and burying his face in the pillow beside Dean. That’s when Dean says it, that “Don’t you ever want to sleep in your own bed, kid?”</p><p>He feels Sam shrug beside him, unconcerned. “Why?”</p><p>Dean shifts his face toward Sam. He scratches at his hair. “Dunno. Getting older, aren’t you? Aren’t you supposed to whine about wanting your own space and shit?”</p><p>Sam scoffs. “I don’t <em>whine.”</em></p><p>“Uh, yes you fucking do.”</p><p>“Whatever.”</p><p>Sam shifts, trying to get comfortable and jostling the bed. Dean is so tired he’s halfway dropped off by the time Sam opens his mouth again.</p><p>“I like sleeping with you. It feels… nice. Safe.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Dean murmurs, so tired his mouth is barely moving. “Me too.”</p><p>“Do you want me to sleep somewhere else?” Sam asks after a while. It comes out grudging, eked out against his will.</p><p>“Naw,” Dean says. He turns over and hooks an arm around Sam, circling his chest in the dark. He pulls him close, chest flush to back, before he falls asleep. “This is fine.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Afterburn</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>A post-Stanford reunion.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>My fixation with Winchester bedsharing is showing.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Dean and Sam share a bed. It’s just what they do. There are days when they fight. Days when Sam is such a goddamn brat, pushing John’s every button and then pushing some of Dean’s for good measure. He’s got a mouth on him, and no amount of running laps or missed meals or extra PT will knock it out of him.</p><p>He is so much like his mother. John can’t even think it without a stab of loss to the heart.</p><p>Dean is patient with Sam in a way that John isn’t. He’d deny it until the cows come home, but John sees the way he is with the boy. Even the bitterest fights are resolved the second Sam needs something—really needs something, doesn’t just want it. Dean coddles him, always sneaking him the lion’s share of their meals, the last piece of the pie. He dotes on the boy.</p><p>And always, always they share a bed.</p><p>It’s not always out of necessity. There have been houses, not many, but few and far between there have been houses with two rooms, three beds. There have been couches. Occasionally, John will even see one or the other turn in for the night in separate beds, but he always wakes to find them twined around each other, arms and legs wrapped close, a nose pressed into a throat, the nape of a neck.</p><p>He shakes his head and goes to start the coffee, head pounding from a night full of whiskey.</p><p>Sam has grown long and skinny, tall as an oak tree. He’s outgrown Dean. John thinks Sam’s likely to outgrow him. His grown boys, still pressed together like children. He shakes his head again.</p><p>Pick your battles, John.</p><p>* * *</p><p>It had been weird learning to sleep without Dean—hard as anything, although it was easy enough to subsume it in the general weirdness of having your whole life turned upside down overnight.</p><p>Everything had been a rush of new, settling into his dorm room, meeting his roommate. Between the new student orientation and the welcome events, Sam hardly had time to think about his loss—the gaping wound of being told <em>if you walk out that door, don’t you ever come back.</em> The hurt, betrayed look in Dean’s eyes, stinging as a slap.</p><p>He learned to sleep in a bed by himself, listening to the unfamiliar cadence of Brady’s breath in the top bunk, telling himself it was Dean’s just to get to sleep. He slept easier when he moved in with Jess—easier with a second body to wrap himself around, as if his own body didn’t know what to do with itself when he was alone.</p><p>Now he’s with Dean again, the both of them tired and sore. Sam feels shell-shocked and Dean is wearing a grim, pressed expression. He can still smell smoke, the scent of it burned into his nostrils. He can smell it on his skin, the noxious scent of soot and burning flesh. He can smell it despite the hour-long shower he took when they got to the motel, despite the way his smoke-stained clothes had vanished while he was in the shower, never to be found again.</p><p>His eyes feel raw and sore from crying. His throat aches from screaming.</p><p>He blinks blearily at the two beds covered in standard-issue floral bedspreads, scratchy and coated in God knows what. He scrubs a hand over his face and falls onto one of them face-first.</p><p>Dean starts toward him, mouth open, hand reaching out. He stops short, pushes his hand through his hair, and says nothing. Sam curls onto his side, turning to face the wall.</p><p>He’s all cried out. Every time he closes his eyes, he can see Jess burning, a crown of fire around her head, wings of flame like a dying angel.</p><p>Dean turns out the light, and Sam gasps involuntarily. He sits up, scrabbling against the sudden dark.</p><p>A sudden presence on the empty side of the bed stills him, a familiar weight against his back—Dean’s back against his. He hears the heavy thump of first one shoe and then another falling to the carpet, the soft shush of jeans hitting the floor after. The comforter being pulled back tugs at the curve of his spine, nudging insistently until Sam sits up with a huff, crawling on his hands and knees to get his feet under the blankets.</p><p>The curtains in this motel are thick and sturdy. No light gets in from outside. His eyes haven’t yet adjusted, and he reaches for his brother in the pitch black. Familiar hands reach back, catching him in strong arms. He sticks his nose into Dean’s neck, just like he did—just like he used to—inhaling the clean scent of sweat and skin. He shudders. A dry sob escapes him.</p><p>Dean holds him close, hands petting over his hair, rubbing his back in slow, soothing circles. He murmurs quiet nothings into the top of Sam’s head. “I got you, Sammy. It’s okay. It’s gonna be okay.”</p><p>And Sam doesn’t believe him—he doesn’t, but it’s such a relief to be held when he can’t hold himself up. He lets himself go loose and limp in Dean’s arms, pressed close chest to chest with no air between them. He kicks a long leg between Dean’s strong thighs and nestles into him. He can feel the deep rumble in Dean’s chest as he speaks. And the words blend together, and the words sound like rain, and soon enough, the morning light.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>You can find me on <a href="http://twitter.com/lovetincture">Twitter</a> if you want to say hello.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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